Fleet Foxes

On the day before Josh Tillman’s 2013 wedding in Big Sur, the 33-year-old folk-rock troubadour — aka Father John Misty — took his bride, Emma, for a long hike before they climbed into an oak tree overlooking the Pacific. Years earlier — long before he’d met Emma in a store parking lot in Laurel Canyon and they’d traveled the world side by side — Tillman had tripped hard after meeting a shaman and ended up, naked, hallucinating in this same tree.
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Last week, YouTube announced a partnership with Music Vault that brought thousands of remastered, high-quality live performances to the platform. More than 13,000 of these concert clips, to be exact, spanning every rock legend of the last 50 years all the way to modern indie favorites (and even a baffling amount of LimpBizkit.) No longer will late-night YouTube rabbit-holes be relegated to lo-fi bootlegs or shaky cell phone footage, huzzah! The partnership marks an initial step in YouTube’s increased interest in the music space.
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Boys & Girls, the debut album by Flavorpill faves Alabama Shakes, is out today. The band’s rise to prominence has been one of the more heartening stories of 2012, and not only because their music is great and entirely deserving of all the acclaim that’s been showered upon it. No, we’re also delighted to see Alabama Shakes somehow achieving full music industry buzzband status, with their decidedly un-hip rock ‘n’ soul sounds turning up in the most unlikely places (like MTV’s Buzzworthy blog). They join the ranks of similarly incongruous buzzbands from over the years, musicians who’ve ridden a wave of hype despite being unfashionable, unmarketable or just plain unlikely candidates for success. We’ve selected some other such bands after the jump — who did we miss?
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If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: George R.R. Martin’s most lovable bastard, Jon Snow.
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What would you like to see Aubrey Plaza do? (Keep the dirty responses to yourselves, please.) Eat flowers? Smoke an apple bong? Bleed profusely from the nose? Jump on a bald guy’s back and steal his giant glasses? Wear a brightly colored afghan? Smash electronics? Flee to the woods? Experience a very intense, red-tinted hallucination? Well, not to spoil it for you or anything, but you will indeed see all of these things in the video for “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings,” by Father John Misty — aka J. Tillman, the former Fleet Foxes drummer who announced his departure from the band only a few weeks ago. Plaza describes her character in the Laurel Canyon-set clip as “a crazy person who destroys [a] funeral.” The track — which we’re thoroughly enjoying — is the first single from Tillman’s solo album, Fear Fun, which drops May 1st.
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Fleet Foxes drummer J. Tillman — a member with the Seattle act since 2008 — will be leaving the band, according to a post he made on his Tumblr. “Back into the gaping maw of obscurity I go,” he shared in his “Farewell Fleet Fans and Friends” goodbye. “Tokyo is my last show… Read More

Last week we stereotyped you by your favorite books, and this week it’s time to apply a bumper edition of our gratuitous generalizations to the world of music. Our stereotyping posts have become something of a tradition at Flavorpill, but still, here’s our obligatory disclaimer: this is an entirely tongue-in-cheek exercise, so don’t get all offended — and also, as ever, several of our favorite records are on here, and we’ll totally own up to all the stereotypes that apply to us. Anyway, with that said, here are 50 albums that keep cropping up on end-of-year lists and the sort of people that like them.
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If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Here, we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters. What would be on the personal playlists of Holden Caulfield or Elizabeth Bennett, Huck Finn or Harry Potter, Tintin or Humbert Humbert? Something revealing, we bet. Or at least something danceable. Read on for a cozy reading soundtrack, character study, or yet another way to emulate your favorite literary hero. This week: Tolkien’s master wizard, Gandalf the Grey.
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